I think there should be a regular French
program.
And I'm sure you're praying and working on
that for the next few years, certainly in
the area of follow-up.
I think there should be a follow-up,
continued evangelistic thrust among Austrians and Belgians.
I'd like to see us do something small
but specific in Denmark.
I think we should continue a summer thrust
in Italy, in Spain, Southern Ireland.
And I think we've got the leadership and
we've got the experience to be able to
do both.
It will mean, of course, in some cases,
if one particular field has some really big
plans for the next few years, they would
have to be willing to sacrifice that to
some degree because we would have to focus
in on this.
I don't think we're just going to find
a miracle team that's going to come and
put this all together.
I think it has to be done within
the individual countries as a vital part of
the strategy for their country.
And in my talks with most of you
personally in the past, you seem to indicate
that this was also your desire.
Well, I wish I could be with you
at this time.
I know each one of you has things
to contribute on this.
And I know that we're never going to
get, you know, perfect little lily-white agreement.
We're men who have now been in the
battle many years.
We have strong ideas.
We may also, I'm sure I do, have
some strong biases, some strong prejudices.
We may even have areas where we've been
hurt or we feel we've not been consulted
or some other area where subtle forms of
pride can come in and affect our decisions
and affect our spiritual balance.
That alone can enable us to make a
really heaven-sent objective decision about this important
matter.
In closing, I want to say I don't
believe we can throw aside our united decision
that this is also these coming years a
time to lay the foundations.
I personally don't see how we can go
ahead, even with our existing programs, much less
this new one, which, of course, would not
necessarily represent a terrific increase of numbers in
the summer.
It may increase.
I hope it will increase.
In terms of the year program, it will
represent a shift of numbers, not such large
numbers in France.
It would certainly be one of the factors.
But I think all of this is linked
with strengthening the foundations in our offices.
In the area of computerization and even in
terms of leadership staff, we've seen some significant
growth and breakthroughs.
There's still some big challenges there.
But I think when it comes down to
the grass roots in terms of typists and
office workers, especially skilled workers but not exclusively,
we have a real man-sized challenge.
And I don't see the burden some of
us have to see a crash typing course
in August to prepare people for one or
two years in our offices as something separate
from a decision to move ahead with this
strategy in France or with this strategy in
Belgium or with this united strategy among Muslims.
I see it as something that is completely
linked.
And I really would appreciate your prayers as
I try to give a lion's share of
my time and effort to building the foundation,
existing relationships, which are crucial, relationships on every
side, just doing everything and anything possible to
lay the foundation so that we can properly
process the applicants, so that we can follow
up on the ex-O-M-ers and
the graduates, and so we can deal effectively
with the wide, overwhelming range of communication that
we are dealing in our basic centers from
all over the world.
Thanks so much for giving me this privilege
to share.
It is a great privilege to be able
to be on a team together with men
and women like yourself.
If there's no women in your meeting, I
certainly hope there are, carry my greetings back
to your wives.
Ministry in all of this is far more
significant than we will ever be able to
outwardly see this side of heaven.
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for this unique means
of communication through this little 35-pence used
cassette tape.
We thank you for what we have seen
accomplished through cassette tapes over the last 20
years and the reel-to-reel tape before
that.
Show us how the cassette tape and the
videotape and every other means that you've given
us can play a vital role in this
full-scale evangelistic thrust to reach these 27
million Muslims of Europe.
We especially think of those locked behind the
Iron Curtain, and it just seems overwhelming, the
challenge of that task and of those unreached
people's group.
And we pray, Lord, we cry out for
our thrust into the Eastern countries that it
may receive greater help from all of us
in the coming years, and especially those Muslims
who are locked seemingly behind double doors of
culture, of political extremism, and of religion.
Lord, we thank you that though we feel
weak and inadequate, though we sometimes feel Satan
is just hassling us and trying to confuse
us and trying to discourage us and trying
to bring disunity, that we have the shield
of faith in which we can stand against
those fiery darts of the evil one.
And, Lord, whether it's a fiery dart of
disunity or pride or self-pity, whether it's
a fiery dart of unbelief or laziness or
midlife muck, that somehow we'll go forth triumphantly
in your name, claiming the victory, until every
person in this world is presented with the
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and until
that great harvest of souls is brought in
and those living churches, worshipping centers of converted,
on-fire people are multiplying and functioning in
your kingdom and in your way.
We commit all this to you.
Lead us, Lord, day by day in intensive
prayer.
We know if any of this is going
to become a reality, it's going to be
through prayer, it's going to be through laying
our lives on the altar of intercession and
experiencing new depths of prayer and travail of
soul that perhaps we have not yet experienced
up to now.
Oh, Lord, teach us to pray.
We're aware that these weapons are not carnal
but are mighty unto you to the pulling
down of strongholds, even these strongholds that have
gripped seemingly one little less than one-sixth
of the whole world's population.
Oh, God, what a burden.
It's too much for us.
It's too much.
Because with it we have the burden for
the man right down the road.
He may be an Englishman, he may be
a Frenchman, he may be a Belgian, he
may be an American tourist.
We're a burden for the whole world.
Lord, you alone know more of how hard
we find it when we've got different visions
and somehow this work has come into being
in a way that we don't have just
one vision or just one area of the
world, but we've got India and the whole
subcontinent with a billion souls and we've got
the two ships reaching out in its powerful
training and catalysts and evangelistic ministry to almost
every nation in the world.
And we've got the burden for our own
home churches and our own home nations, even
Canada and America and Australia and New Zealand,
Sweden, Norway.
Lord, we believe you can hold this together.
You can give us the flexibility, the brokenness.
Lord, we know we have to appropriate the
flexibility and the brokenness to be able to
move ahead simultaneously under the guidance of your
Holy Spirit in these different burdens and these
different visions and enable us to do it
in oneness of heart and unity that we
may demonstrate biblical New Testament reality on every
turn.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The remainder of this tape is just a
sermon sent from one of my home churches
if someone wants to listen to it.
But since this is an original tape, I'd
appreciate it being brought back.
You can make some copies if you want,
but brought back so that I can make
copies.
I appreciate any correspondence that I can get
from any of you and look forward, of
course, to getting a time of fellowship with
Peter Maiden when he'll share with me what
all of you have discussed.
And, of course, I know there'll be some
notes as well.
I look forward to seeing you in July
and August conferences and other times.
Just to say that any time, especially when
I'm here, any of you brothers would like
to spend one or two days here in
Bromley, I have a place for you to
stay or your whole family.
We would really welcome you.
A lot is happening here.
We'd love you to come and share with
us and be together with us in God's
timing.
Thank you.
I would also just ask you to do
anything possible to get leaders trained in preparation
for the summer.
I know that there is a shortened version
of the leadership manual in the pipeline, but
I think, meanwhile, we need to use the
existing manual.
There's a couple thousand in Belgium.
Together with these five cassettes, especially for people
that have been on OM before, but anybody
who's in a leadership position, on those five
leadership training cassettes that I made here in
Bromley, I cover a lot of basic issues,
especially important material on the goals and aims
of OM as a movement.
I hope perhaps when you're traveling by car
or doing something else, you also could listen
to those five cassettes.
I'd like to get a little more feedback.
I always appreciate feedback on any of the
cassette messages that I've been circulating.
I'm trying to get some new material out
that I've done recently.
And if you, of course, in your national
language leadership manual editions could produce some leadership
tapes in your own language to go with
the manual, that would be really great.
Even when the shortened version of the manual
is produced, I am going to continue to
try to get people to study the longer
edition.
I hope that we can ultimately revise and
update the longer edition as well, but we've
got a couple of thousand of the existing
editions.
Anything like this can always use improvement, but
I think we need to make use of
what we have.
A lot of these things in the leader's
manual, even some of this material in this
tape, we take for granted as leaders.
We've heard it so much.
But a lot of new people today, even
new leaders, are missing some of these basic
concepts and ideas, and then they have trouble
sharing and presenting it to others or answering
sometimes the tough questions that other people are
asking.
So I'd appreciate any effort you can make
along that line.
This is the beginning of the year, and
it's great to give out little requests and
pray, and we believe in that.
But I'd like to lay one of the
greatest burdens that's on my heart, on your
heart, some of you already have it, maybe
even more than me, because it will enable
us to even focus our praying.
One of the greatest problems we have in
OM, though it's a blessing problem, is that
OM is not one thing.
I gave a very important message on this
at the conference.
I'm not sure, it may have been the
last week, and if some of you would
like some of the messages from the evening
of the last week, we can get them.
I talked about God's strategy, an OM strategy.
There's a lot of fuzzy thinking about OM
strategy because it is unique.
OM is not a carbon copy of something
that came before.
And in this strategy, we brought out how
there are certain major emphases, like right now
we're trying to emphasize the Muslim world more,
and yet we already have the ships, which
automatically are a huge emphasis.
And now they tell us, and we agreed
on it, this year is the foundation now.
Now we're going to suddenly emphasize the foundation.
Now as we get a new burden and
a new emphasis, what happens to the old
ones?
They keep going on.
And we try to emphasize in that message
that God has led us in each one
of these fields we're involved in, and that
as we go into new things, we don't
want to neglect the old things.
We may change them.
We may even be led of the Holy
Spirit to make big changes as we did
in Spain and Italy, but not generally to
totally abandon something that the Holy Spirit has
been doing.
And we then try to give a little
clarion call for places like Mexico, which isn't
a Muslim country, and it isn't the most
un-evangelized country in the world, and yet
the Lord led us there, and things are
happening there.
I just talked to Dave Hicks on the
phone about some of the blessings in Mexico,
and I'm trying to work out in my
schedule to visit Mexico City.
But early in this decade, we announced that
we wanted, by the grace of God, to
make this a decade of Muslim emphasis, of
emphasizing the Muslim world.
And we'd like to carry that on at
this time, including right here in Bromley, that
in our prayer meetings, we continue to have
this emphasis.
In our literature distribution, we continue to have
this emphasis.
We produce some tremendous leaflets, books.
A lot of material is now available.
We need more.
But often even what we have doesn't get
distributed as well as it could.
If everybody had this vision, then there would
be seldom a literature table where there wouldn't
be something that could really emphasize the Muslim
world.
We even resurrected my old booklet, The Challenge
of Islam in South Asia.
The story of that, supposedly it was going
to be 20 years ago, a chapter in
a book for Moody Press.
They asked me to write it.
And the book was never published.
So we published the chapter on our own.
And now I've just republished it.
And it's amazing how many people even within
OM don't really understand all that's happening and
all that's available if they have a little
vision, a little get up and go to
move forward.
And I hope that this burden, as I
share it with you, will help in that
direction both in praying and in action because
I don't think we should share one from
the other.
In trying to emphasize this decade of Muslim
emphasis, it came to my mind that if
you're driving a car down the road 30
miles an hour and you increase it to
40, most people would not notice it.
Even sitting in the back seat you might
not notice it, much less standing on the
road.
I think OM's Muslim thrust as we came
into the 80s was going about 30 miles
an hour with a number of dangers that
could have moved it back to 20 miles
an hour and further.
And we decided to sort of have some
kind of program, some kind of challenge that
people could somehow see.
And with that we declared this decade of
Muslim evangelism.
We didn't, I'm not sure, get 100%
unity about it.
And we certainly have, in wrestling with so
many other things, we certainly have failed to
drive it deeper into the fiber and the
being of the whole OM body.
But I think we have shifted from 30
miles an hour to 40, but it's a
little hard to notice.
And I thought before I share some of
the challenges for prayer and some of the
really devilish opposition we're having to this forward
thrust, I might just mention a few of
the victories, a few of the answers to
prayer that we have seen that are very,
very encouraging.
It's easy to take things for granted.
The Berlin team.
Just take for granted.
It's going to just go on and on
and on.
Well, when I visited Berlin and visited that
team two years ago, I tell you, I
was a bit shocked because in fact it's
a tough team and that year hardly anybody
on the team was thinking of permanently going
on into Turkey.
There were a couple because they discovered that
it's tough and they felt that wasn't their
calling.
This has been the history of OM's thrust
into the Muslim world that we get a
lot of young people very enthusiastic.
But when they see what it's going to
cost in terms of perseverance, they see that
some Muslims don't come to Christ even after
praying continually for them for one year or
five years.
They don't come.
All kinds of problems come, even doubting the
very faith.
One man that we sent to Turkey many,
many years ago is not even a Christian
today.
So let's not take for granted that somehow
the Arab team is still going on in
London and now has expanded its satellite units
to Belgium and to Italy and that the
Berlin team is still going on, though very
locked into a separate culture and out of
the mainstream of OM with Larry Oren carrying
the leadership all these years in that same
difficult city.
Last time I was there, I think it
was only a mile from the Berlin Wall
which is enough to depress anybody.
So let's not take for granted what the
Lord's done over the years and even these
last few years as there has been a
definite increase and some definite breakthroughs, though some
of them may be small.
You know, one of the most significant messages
at the conference was from the leader of
the work in Pakistan, a Muslim country.
And you know, one of the reasons he's
still persevering out there in the Muslim world
when others have returned is because he has
this concept and that is to think positively
and to see the little things that God
is doing that may at times go unnoticed,
especially if we're studying it from a distance.
And certainly the growth of the work in
Pakistan, all of which has been in the
last three or four years, is one of
the most exciting breakthroughs that we've seen as
we move forward with this vision.
And we want to thank the Lord for
that and pray for that even today.
The 70s within OM, though the Muslim vision
continued, the 70s was definitely an era of
ships.
And toward the end of the 70s and
early 80s, I haven't got all the dates,
we had even thought of the third ship,
which brought no small amount of trauma into
the OM body and in which we had
to wrestle things out.
Where are we going?
And as leaders, we decided we can't go
everywhere.
And that now that we've emphasized the ships
and we want to continue to emphasize the
ships, because you can't start something that big
without continued emphasis.
That by the grace of God, we wanted
the 80s to be an emphasis for the
Muslim world.
We felt we don't need new projects.
We don't need new countries to any large
degree.
We don't need to buy a gospel.
Somebody came to me again, have you ever
thought of airplanes for Christ?
I get that question almost every couple of
months.
Yes, we have thought of airplanes for Christ,
trains for Christ, buses for Christ, donkeys for
Christ, but we feel that this is the
decade to somehow reinforce the existing work, no
matter how unglamorous the Muslim world may be,
and to throw our time and effort and
talent and those STL profits into the Muslim
world.
Now that fits with the original vision of
STL profits, which was India, because there's 100
million Muslims in India and it's one of
the areas where we've reached the most Muslims.
We've given more Muslims the gospel in India
than all the other countries almost combined and
have done the least to follow it up,
because you need specialists.
And one of the victories of this emphasis
is that there's now a nucleus of young
men wanting to return to India to work
only among Muslims.
Just as this seems to be becoming a
reality, we talked about the new strategy in
Katmandu this year, the visa thing, which would
provide the foundation to do this, hits us
on the head like a runaway train.
Let's not, however, be discouraged by that.
It does mean a change in strategy.
It does mean that even for in-depth
Muslim follow-up in India, we are going
to have to count on the Indians more
than we had just eight months ago in
Katmandu.
That's something we need to keep in mind.
Keep also in mind that as we went
into the 80s, South America was born and
going strong.
Also, there was a strong push that we
begin a major assault in the Far East.
And Taiwan, Korea, Japan, many other countries were
coming into the OM with Muslim binoculars.
With this coming at us from different sides,
miraculously the Lord gave us unity to make
this emphasis of Muslim evangelism.
This decision has enabled us to make many
other important decisions within OM, including the decision
to stop quite a few things.
Now that may be only the initial stage,
but you see, unless you clear the way
for what you want to do, you won't
do it.
So some of the implications of our challenge
for the Muslim world and this strong emphasis,
some of them have been negative and some
people haven't liked it.
But God somehow has continued to give us
unity and we're going forward and we hope
that everybody in broadly especially will have this
vision to help forward this burden, this challenge,
whatever name we might give it.
The first step in this emphasis is linked
with what we're doing right now, prayer.
And there was a proposal set forth.
I looked at the old coordinator's minutes from
1982 and there were some proposals made which
actually I don't think they ever got completely
agreed upon.
They were in some ways general goals.
We couldn't force people to do these things.
But we presented it as a challenge.
It's interesting to look at this and see
some areas where we've been very successful, areas
where we have failed.
This is one of the things we want
to pray about now.
What does the Lord want us to do
right here in Bromley?
Because the first step is mobilizing the church
and mobilizing prayer.
We have not seen as many recruits, at
least for certain countries as we would have
liked.
But that was not the only emphasis of
this thrust.
It was to mobilize the church, to mobilize
prayer and to bring about Muslim awareness.
Now a lot has been done in that
area.
There's not time to tell about it.
But I tell you sometimes it's like trying
to hammer a nail into granite.
And this is why we want to pray
even today and why I'm praying this little
message will set the pace for prayer throughout
the year.
A couple of things specifically to think about
and pray toward.
Meetings and seminars.
We have taken literally thousands of meetings in
these couple of years presenting this burden and
this vision and seminars.
I remember when the ship was down on
the south coast going down and I was
asked they've got other people better at this
than me to speak on the challenge of
Islam.
That tape is available somewhere.
And we saw you know every time we
have these meetings and we give this message
it's often a part of an overall message
for world evangelism and the prayer cards go
out and Operation World goes out and Challenge
of Pakistan goes out and the Middle East
brochure goes out.
There are always some victories and we praise
God for that.
In fact, there's not a single mission society
working among Muslims that has not felt to
some small degree the impact of this push
because they have got recruits and there's an
increase of recruits and during these last couple
of years a whole new mission has been
born founded by an exo-emer that is
getting many, many inquiries.
They are going to learn as we have
learned that not all these people are ready
for in-depth, long-term Muslim evangelism.
You may not feel that's your cup of
tea but believe me and this is one
of the purposes for this plea and it
is a plea what we do here affects
this vision more than almost any other field
because the vision was partly born here partly
born in this environment wrestling with all the
information all the challenges even the gospel submarine
for evangelism in depth.
We need your commitment.
The audio-visual department which as Ian shared
with us at least from his sharing seems
to be leaking and limping has still had
a major contribution.
The purchase of three or four copies of
the film Unlocking the Door of Islam some
copies of which have been used again and
again and again other copies of which suddenly
end up on a shelf and then I
think it was even put into video cassette.
There is much more going on in this
little AV department than probably anybody knows because
it hasn't a high profile because the work
the real action is out on the teams
it's out on the ship it's out where
they get these videos and they get these
films and they get this material only a
small part of it is back here where
it's visible.
Let's pray for more opportunities to present the
challenge of Islam.
You know the Keith Green concerts that I
have to speak at I have to speak
about going into all the world.
They're not going to give me any other
choice.
That's great.
And I tell you there's potential recruits there.
We've been battling to keep the bookstalls.
Last minute we almost lost the book tables.
They wanted to take it back and we
held out because we want to be able
to put some of these key books that
are on our hearts about the challenge of
Islam.
I'm not saying anybody would oppose that on
these tables and push.
I just read in the STL leaders' minutes
that some of these unreached people's prayer cards
have dropped is that to ten pence?
Because we're trying to sell them for one
pound fifty I think when they first came
out.
We want, just on a memo hundreds of
those prayer cards.
The vision of the prayer cards is key
in presenting the challenge of Islam as they
emphasize to a great degree the unreached Muslim
lands.
Literature, tapes, leaflets, even that printing press downstairs
which we should be able to get a
printer for all can have a part in
this emphasis.
And you are involved in that.
Do not detach yourself from this vision.
If you are NOM you are part of
the Muslim emphasis.
And what you do faithfully enables others who
may be more directly involved to do what
they have faithfully.
Some of you are selling books to book
shops.
Do you try to get book shops to
take any of these books about the challenge
of Islam?
Not generally the fast selling books.
I don't know how well Goldsmith's book going
with his name that should be a top
seller.
So literature, books, leaflets, prayer cards, operation world,
many other related things are all part of
extending this vision.
And then of course I touched on it.
Films, also speakers.
We've had many into our conferences like Charles
Marsh, Lionel Gurney, Tom Brewster, who of course
maybe Maynberg isn't just a Muslim world, but
his tool is directly linked.
Contextualization and how to learn languages and really
get among these people made an enormous impact.
Working that out on the field of course
is more difficult than listening to the lecture
in Belgium and there's an ongoing discussion about
that.
Praise God for the new slide sets that
have come out about different Muslim challenges like
Pakistan.
But sometimes they just sit.
It's a great burden on my heart and
I hope that we can all put our
hands to the plow in a firmer way
and go forward.
As you know we launched this decade and
it was a very personal thing to me
as well as a group thing.
I made four major trips into the Muslim
world.
One in my little Ford which now Bob
Hitching is the owner of through the Middle
East and we produced a Middle East prayer
film that wasn't quality enough for wide distribution
though it has been continually used.
And then I took the North Africa trip
and the letter I wrote from North Africa
some have written to me has been one
of the strongest challenges they've ever had for
that part of the world.
I don't know if any of you have
seen that letter but I was broken to
pieces riding across Algeria when I dictated that
memo that went around the world and then
the two trips again into the Gulf area
and last earlier this year three months out
mainly all in Muslim countries.
From this we released a whole series of
tapes again part of the ministry here that
have gone all over the world.
and yet at times we had no money
even to pay for these tapes and I
cut back.
Alec Brackett had to increase the price on
the tapes because he was in financial difficulty
and I was demotivated though we still sent
them out.
We've had tremendous response.
I don't think we can ever measure what
God does through literature, films and tapes that
go out right from here.
And to me this is one of the
most motivating things about being involved here.
A quick run down on some of the
growth we've seen actually in the work.
I think it's normal for the first couple
of years of this kind of thrust that
foundation laying, literature, communication, recruits, stirring of hearts.
It's been a tough battle.
There have been some victories at the same
time out in the fields.
A phenomenal growth of the work in Pakistan
despite many assaults from Satan and a number
of people who now have made a decision
through their short term in Pakistan to go
life term, long term in Muslim evangelism there
or somewhere else.
The victories and the growth of the work
among the Afghans.
Again, something that just is a name within
OM, serve for a few people is a
lot of work and a lot of money
in a very indirect form of evangelism because
it is legitimate relief work.
It's the first major relief work that OM
has ever been involved in.
Why do we do that when generally we
don't go into that kind of thing ever
and leave that to others?
Why?
Because it's a leading unreached Muslim country that's
been on our heart for 28 years.
That's why we rolled the policies down the
river and started a relief work, giving it
a different name, pushing it outside the OM
technically even though most of the people are
all OMers.
And it's been a rough, tough, long term
battle.
And right now Gordon Magney desperately needs a
couple of long term right hand men, both
in administration and evangelism there.
Praise God for what has been done as
we move forward to do more.
The growth in Bangladesh, the decision even recently
to increase the number of longer term nationals
discipling Muslims and church planting among Muslims.
The increased thrusts that we've had in the
subcontinent.
Several major, major thrusts have gone among Muslims.
In OM with all the things we do,
it goes almost unnoticed.
Big push recently among the Bengali Muslims.
At the same time, we still don't have
the trained language speaking men to engage in
the kind of follow up which is the
second stage and the stage we need to
move into more seriously in the coming months.
Of course, the second stage is not always
possible without the first stage.
I think the Middle East and the Arab
world has had some of the toughest assaults
from the enemy because we haven't been able
to get an increase of recruits to any
great degree except within Europe.
Well, let's praise the Lord for that.
Suddenly, Italy has got a team working among
Arabs.
London has persevered and seen some phenomenal breakthroughs
and now we have even a team among
Arabs based in Zaventem.
Who would have ever dreamed this five years
ago?
This is partly made possible when people heard
about this.
I tell you there was opposition but we
could do it because this was the decade
of Muslim emphasis and so we tried to,
during this period, go the extra mile and
when there's four things we want to do,
we want to give priority to that thing
that touches Muslims, not to liquidate those other
things but to try to give priority.
We want to do that financially.
We've been able to put tens of thousands
of pounds into Muslim literature, especially out of
special projects, which then dried up until a
couple of weeks ago when we had a
nine and a half thousand pound gift for
it.
Then back to North Africa, as you know,
we now have a small team going into
Nisha again.
I think one of the exciting things about
North Africa have been the interest that others
now are showing in that area, including Spanish
-speaking people working among North Africans, especially some
who know a little bit of Spanish in
places like Utah.
That's an encouragement.
It's small, but it may be the beginning
of something bigger.
Of course, as we go forward in this,
at times it's really almost overwhelming.
What have some of the setbacks been that
we can pray about?
Number one, the lack of money.
This vision for the Muslim world came simultaneously
with the biggest financial crisis in the history
of L.A. It's a miracle that survived
at all.
We need to pray specifically for money for
the Muslim world.
Every Muslim country wants more money for projects,
except I think Turkey has money.
Again, this is interesting.
You get such a great variety of countries,
but Turkey has literature money.
There are other holdups there.
So the lack of funds has been big.
Number two, the lack of prayer.
There is a lack of prayer.
People say, why are the prayer meetings so
long?
If we don't have extended prayer meetings, we
can't even get to some of these places.
There are so many different emphases.
People always want worship.
We want worship.
So we give the whole first hour of
the prayer meeting to worship.
We need lots of variety to keep up
against enemy flack.
The third setback has been the state and
the indifference in the church.
It really bothers me at times that in
OM we tend to, certain OMers, others know,
take the blame for everything ourselves.
And people really get discouraged, feel everything is
our fault.
But you know, as one member suffers, we
all suffer.
And a lot of people out in the
churches, they think we're the most alive, aggressive,
sharp thing that's working in the mission world
today.
Most of us in OM don't feel that
way because we see our sins and our
failures and our weaknesses and most of us
so idealistic, it seems, compared to the task,
what we're doing seems so small.
But if you go too far that way
and get discouraged, then what you do is
going to be even smaller and pretty soon
you won't even exist, spiritually speaking.
And I feel we must realize the church
does not have this vision for the Muslim
world.
We are avant-garde, we are radicals.
They don't even want us to come.
Many church doors are completely closed to me.
And one of the reasons is the fear
that I will challenge people to go to
the regions beyond.
They wouldn't necessarily say Muslim world.
To them, anything outside of their own church
would be dangerous in terms of their thinking,
especially with an interdenominational ragtime, charismatic, non-charismatic,
you know.
And I don't think we realize how much
gossip there is against OM.
What we're seeing in Venezuela is, you know,
that's a peak.
We see that.
The continued innuendos, the gossip, the negative things.
Get back to the churches and they decide
they don't want to send any recruits anymore
or the Muslim world is too big a
challenge, they can't get their people to even
evangelize down the road.
It's the either-or mentality.
We're constantly fighting and it's something we must
pray against in a stronger way and realize
our responsibility.
Then there's the setbacks through visas, children's education,
illness, people being shot at the doorstep, people
dying of weird diseases at night.
End the setbacks.
And we must take courage that despite these
setbacks, somehow, we still got these armies in
these various Muslim countries all over the world
and the reinforcements by God's grace are coming.
Another setback, of course, is the fact there
are so many burdens, so many challenges.
We are interested in the abortion issue.
We are wanting to be good Christian citizens.
I filled out my forms this morning to
get my ballots.
I couldn't even understand the form, but my
faith filled out and I get my ballots
so I can be a good American and
vote.
Who am I supposed to vote for?
Maybe you can let me know.
OM is a movement that is trying to
preach the whole counsel of God.
Now, if you preach the whole counsel of
God and you try to live the whole
counsel of God, you're going to be a
busy person and you're going to be frustrated.
How many of you have ever been frustrated
with so many burdens, so many things you
long to do?
Have you ever been frustrated?
Oh, there's a major disease on the planet
Earth.
Then, of course, another major setback has been
the disunity.
There has been disunity even within OM.
This year was the year of some of
the greatest disunity I've ever seen in terms
of basic philosophy, not personal, and personality is
always some of that, but basic philosophy, basic
ideas.
Even in connection with the Muslim world, it's
impossible to agree on one strategy.
There are many different strategies.
There are many different kinds of Muslims.
When David Hicks launched a real heavy challenge
in that magazine, OM World, and released it
to every prayer partner in the United States
presenting the vision of the Muslim world to
20,000 people, of course, there were a
few things there for security reasons that shouldn't
have been mentioned.
The memo started to come on his desk
that I'm sure he found to some degree
difficult.
You see, that's part of the problem.
We're dealing with heavy security areas.
One mistake in the literature and propaganda can
cause a lot of difficulty.
So, one hand, we want to emphasize the
Muslim world, motivate the church, motivate God's people,
make recruits.
On the other hand, there's still a small
voice that says, don't say too much.
Don't say too much.
And those with a mouth like me that
has an ability to get in trouble, it
would be easier just to not say anything.
He says, I don't want to get in
trouble with the security guys.
I've already been in jail for that.
The Russians, of course, not the Americans.
So, this is a challenge.
And the enemy has continually tried, especially this
year, to bring disunity, to bring in used
gossip and differences of viewpoint to slow us
down.
Endless hours, times, days, weeks of discussion to
get the ship of God, in a sense,
all of O.M. I'm speaking of, back
on course.
And I feel that through the last weeks,
it's not perfect, but I feel that we
more of my soul than I have in
a year, a couple of years, that by
God's grace, O.M., both the ship side
and the land side, is back on course.
It's not perfect.
And there'll never be sort of simplistic total
healing over all that we've been through, because
there will be scars.
But I believe that O.M. ship is
back on course.
And I pray that these two teams here
will commit themselves through love and work and
Christ-centered living to help keep it that
way.
And that will enable us to have the
greatest forward thrust in the Muslim world, together
with the other societies that I believe the
church has ever known up to now.
Let's pray.